Art is a longing for God
(Aleksiej Jawlensky)

The first, shocking - yet unfortunately little explaining - experience we have while seeing Andrzej Grenda's works for the first time is the experience of mystery. Not only that unpleasant feeling of infirmity which at the beginning prevents us from working out the meaning of pictures - puzzles, but also that mystery which the artist himself faces building the world of his works.

In a peculiar way, gradually we realise the fact that the drawings are the expression of the artist's resistance to common spiritual blindness of Man, full unawareness of human destiny and his belief in the liberating impact of art.

We seem to have discovered the reason for which the author appeals to social memory and to the source of general norms which could take a form of a myth, for example. What is more, it seems to us that we have found the key to - at least - a part of Andrzej Grenda's works.

Elements of myths the artist refers to belong to various cultures, yet at the same time they are the elements of our collective common awareness and imagination. The bird-like forms - guards of eternal mysteries, figures covered with shrouds, Icarus, the motives of Fallen Angels, the Last Supper or Lazarus' Resurrection - are the wide range of motives taking their origin in the tradition of ancient world and Christianity, motives which are equally significant in Andrzej Grenda's creation. It is worth mentioning that the scenes created by the artist have ambiguous enigmatic character which denies their links with the traditional symbolic of this kind. We start to suspect that in case of this creation endeavours including the elements of sacrum within a work of art are not only the intellectual manifestation of an erudite deeply rooted in culture. And - though it is very important - they are not a mere attempt to place individual fates somewhere within infinity fixed by the recurring motives of the myth.

It is Time which is here the subject of reflection. Not only its essence and character but also the issues whose solution will convincingly present the relation of the past, the present and the future.

Many works appear to be like prophecies, the other ones are a reconstruction, or they emphasise the past and future events. They foresee changes of reality, the forms of existence, changes in the state of awareness. They evoke what is merely sensed or forgotten, or just what is revealed only under specific circumstances. All the changes, alterations, transformations or transfers can take place only when time is perceived in a specific way.

The artist seems to assume two concepts which consistently permeate each other. We certainly notice here the influence of Aristotelian concept of time. In this concept it is a change which lets us be aware of time - enables us to define what was before and after the change. The feature of continuity is not attributed to now - it is just a moment of transfer from one state to another.

Another concept of time which may prove to be useful when interpreting Andrzej Grenda's works is Husserl's theory. He perceives reality as a series of subsequent now which mingle with awareness of passing away and recollecting as well as anticipating.

On the other hand Heidegger stresses the fact that being in the world is simultaneously being for something, being forward, being for the future and, as a result of this, being for death. Death, however, is only one of the aspects of Dasein, the key notion in his theory. Another essential aspect is death. Thus the past and the future can not exist independently. We can neither treat the past as solely it has already gone nor the future only as it hasn't gone yet. Is it possible to use artistic means of expression to reflect on one of the most difficult philosophical issues?

One of the most significant characteristics of our life is continuous trying to go beyond the limits of existence. The artist himself goes beyond this limit confronting what is beyond our consciousness and consequently the characters in his works do the same.

Lazarus who is awaken from an everlasting dream and crosses the borders of two realities - that certainly is the most spectacular example. However, figures in shrouds, who have mysterious knowledge whispered into their ears, on the spur of the moment become inhabitants of two worlds: the past one and the future one which is still in the making.

The representation layer connected with selected motives (most often of eschatological character) is not the artist's only contribution to the reflection on time, or scraps of time.

This reflection is mostly concerned with the artist's personal expression where he does not refer to the world of sacrum. In these works we can precisely notice to what extent the compositional devices of the creator participate in the discussion mentioned above.

It is difficult to evoke the existence of time intervals by means of a work of art. Andrzej Grenda overcomes this difficulty setting all the narrative elements within the individual yet juxtaposed plans: space, time and sometimes thematic plans.

Sensual impressions conditioning our cognition are put in order by a priori forms of time and space, which let us place impressions one by one. Differentiation of space plans clearly reinforces the reflection of time differences.

Many drawings consist of a few compositional plans. Pictures are sometimes divided into parts, where the central part often includes the main motive of a work, which in many cases appears within a specific transitory landscape. Parts of a composition function in various space plans built by means of very interesting formal means of expression. In the scope of one drawing a sequence of mingled pictures makes an impression of the ones taken out from another context, like in collage - cut out and stuck on another surface. Perfect illusionary devices let us see the edges of surface, feel thickness of paper, notice shadows cast by it. The illusion seems to come true when the artist 'pins" his sheets of paper by non-existing nails, or 'frames ' a drawing with a non-existing 'passe-partout'. The distance is also emphasised in the representative layer of a picture by some 'alien' elements - 'topographic signs' originating from technical drawing: arrows, lines, triangles showing the way to some objects. Particular fragments of works become quotations (and some fragments of compositions are autoquotations of Andrzej Grenda's creation) taken from a wider context (which the area of the artist's awareness, memory and imagination is) and juxtaposed so as to come to the essence of the message. The message, consisting of a few fragments, does not have a character of a linear narrative. We realise that we do not face any 'thematic' story but an essential quotation, motive whose groundwork is most frequently the central element of a drawing.

What happens in drawings consistently happens both in the separated space plans and in other time plans. It reminds the manner of Medieval simultaneous theatre where the subsequent scenes were performed in various places (spaces) , but also time - both drama time and the time of reception - was not continuous but comprised separated changeable time intervals of scenes. Andrzej Grenda's stage design practice, which can be observed in the works inspired by stage reality, probably had an impact on the way the presented world is created in his drawings.

If we tried to identify Andrzej Grenda's creation within the artistic tradition we could recall a significant moment when the powers of classical moderation and restless romantic spirit - present in many variations and mutations even nowadays - clashed. Two contradictory attitudes - one much more accentuating the visual artistic form and the other one stressing the psychic power - mark the borders of traditional dualism: classical being and romantic becoming. With his tendency for linear structuring of a composition by constructing space in parallel zonal layers (few compositions have a diagonal character or they are cut by a diagonal form) the artist's creation would get close to neo-classical reflection. The mechanism of endowing objects with dynamics, the objects which are not treated by the author as mere things, works by placing them within particular spaces (specially those associated with history and recollections of landscapes) and the atmosphere they create by their own characteristic features.

When we take into account that the thematic and representation layers are sufficiently filled with emotions, we will have to accept the artist's intentions not to dominate such a multi-layer message by a dynamic composition.

What is more important in case of Andrzej Grenda's creation is saturating the pictures with emotional and mood-creating values, which links his works with romantic tradition. This tradition (maintained by references to a specific surrealism) makes us interpret the world of the drawings as the world seen from behind the open wings in the theatre or through a window with a view to the unknown.

'The motive of an open window (...) means the border of two concepts of life and the world. It links and separates at the same time. Nostalgia attracts our sight and our emotions to this enormous world full of horror, anxiety and mysteries, however, the need for safety and warmth keeps Man in a protective room, yet leaving him with the feeling of weakness and disappointment' - Jan Białostocki wrote referring to Caspar David Friedrich's work. The atmosphere of drawings is achieved here by many means of expression whose technical nature the artist is not willing to talk about. These means of expression are undoubtedly secondary only to brilliant workshop which can be seen both in the fragments where he creates the world by illusionistic means as well as where he looks for a sign - symbol to express a more general idea.

The 'graphic' character of Andrzej Grenda's drawings, 'mezzotint' velvet softness of some fragments, attract our attention. Enchanted as we are we forget for a while that we stand in front of a drawing, noticing 'clear traces of laying a wash' , play with textures and tender, deep harmony of the structure of tonal values of a picture.

The world which is created is the world of 'inscrutable cases' where supernatural, dispersed and drizzling silvery light breaks wonderful darkness where mysterious and often incomplete, non-defined silhouettes lurk.

Entering the world of Andrzej Grenda's imagination we have a moving impression of changeability and passing away, melancholy, nostalgia and ... fear. Both when we recognise in the pictures mythological and religious motives and when we observe sails on the water, a landscape which is just a memory or we anticipate events which may take place on stage full of decorations, yet still without any actors on it. In each case we more or less clearly touch the sphere of transcendence. We realise that the omnipresent God's eye may appear in the window through which we observe the world.

Dariusz Leśnikowski